The Opportunity Paradox

 It has been exactly 100 days since i had that fateful discussion. Life has gone through quite a churn in past couple of months with almost every day being an emotional rollercoaster. It feels as if i have had a near death scenario or some severely strong scenario that has released all pent up thoughts that lay hidden in some remote corners of mind, waiting for their turn to occupy the thought space. Mind has been wondering and wandering a lot about "what if" scenarios a lot off late and it has been a virtual pattimandram happening inside pondering over the "if's" and "buts".

On one hand it feels too arrogant to even think about long term when situations are so dynamic and become volatile at the click of a trigger. In this particular case it was more of wishing against reality, that was clearly visible from long for a while, just delaying the inevitable in mind while refusing to prepare oneself for it. On the other hand, we can't live everyday thinking that we may die tomorrow right? Even though such a thought process at a society level would cure us off all evils, it is not a practical situation. I've often heard my friends saying, if they save X amount of money, they can consider retirement. But that X has exponentially increased in size and going by their original targets even though they've surpassed that number years back, they are still in the run. Either by choice or by design that, we need to work and earn (more importantly) as long as we can, is the defacto slogan of this rat race of existence. I used to wonder during my initial years into my career that i've never seen anyone retire from my industry and possibly mine would be the first batch of people who will begin to see people breaching that age mark. Was more curious to see whether it would be voluntary or otherwise for the industry keeps moving at break neck speed, making a majority of profiles obsolete. Even if one invests time on themselves and keep themselves saleable, its the case of used cars vs new ones. They may be gas guzzlers and might not be the efficient time tested ones, but people would still prefer the new flashy ones as compared to erstwhile products right? Same applies to candidates and profiles and their careers as well. In my own case, the person who retired as the head of our department is still working in some startup, the other lady who would've crossed 58 this month, is heading a company and the person who retired the year i started my career is still working as an independent consultant in this new company where i've joined!!!!

Whether they do this to beat boredom or to stay relevant or being called upon to leverage their skills and knowledge is a different debate. But how many others are there who are still having service and are not finding jobs just because of their age (i find it hard to buy the argument about compensation for kids with half their age earn several times their salary). I read an article on job market in India where for 6000 government job positions several lakhs of people had applied and how people coming out colleges are offered fake placement assurances with majority of the companies not having the capacity to absorb or honor those letters of intent provided. At the same time, how the industry is struggling to get resources for the technologies where they've invested in and not finding the right resources!! On one hand why they invest in something that is hard to be serviced begs a question, possibly because of a good snake oil sales agent of a product company. At the same time, why such skills are not easily picked up by the profile market, where people fall head over heels to keep themselves relevant. Somewhere there is a huge lie being propagated that doesn't make sense any longer.

I am not sure where things are heading anyway and being the proverbial ant, clutching on to a withered leaf on the flowing passage of time, have managed this far, with gods grace. I can only pray that the guiding light continues to shine bright in coming years as well. May be we are all about to witness a huge change in the way jobs are created and delivered in India and also worldwide. A new norm is being formulated in front of us that is breaking down every standing structure of how things operated for the past 7 decades. How soon one adapts, accepts and taps into its potential, may show who stays afloat in their journey.